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Daily Devotion: Matthew 4:1-2

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Matthew 4:1-2    "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred." 

The Bible tells us that Jesus was tempted in all the same ways we are tempted (Hebrews 4:15). We are, by our sin nature, prone to temptation and often likely to yield to the same. Jesus did not have our sin nature, so how was it that He was tempted? This is yet another sacrifice that He made for us so that our High Priest (Jesus) could be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

In the last verse of Matthew, chapter three, Jesus saw heaven opened. The Spirit of God descended upon Him in the form of a dove. The voice of God spoke on that occasion, declaring that Jesus was His beloved Son, and that He (the Father) was well pleased with Him (the Son). It appears that immediately following His baptism that the Spirit (perhaps still in the form of a dove) led Jesus up into the wilderness.

Jesus fasted in that lonely place (see Strong’s and Thayer’s definitions of “wilderness”) for forty days and nights. Even though He was in a lonely place without human companionship, the Spirit did not abandon Him. God brought Jesus to that place for the express purpose of enduring temptation. Not only did this give the man Jesus a complete understanding of the struggle of our humanity, but it also gives us a clear example of how to answer the temptations we face in life.

For everything the devil offered Him, Jesus had an answer. Those answers were always grounded in the good word of God. Relying on God, Jesus was able to rebuke the devil and command the devil to depart from Him. There was no temptation the devil could offer that was better than the truth.

Dear ones, I pray that we will be led by the Spirit, even in wilderness places. Let us look to our example, Jesus Christ, and see that even the wilderness places belong to God. Let us take God’s word as our defense against all of Satan’s subtleties. Satan has never been greater than God, and God’s word tells us that if we resist the devil

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